Talk:Southern Huila

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Discussion for: Southern Huila • View • Links • Related changes

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Page scope

Southern Huila treats seven municipalities of the south of the department of Huila in Colombia as a cannabis growing area: San Agustín, Pitalito, Timaná, Acevedo, Suaza, Guadalupe and Garzón. The department as an administrative unit is treated at Huila Department, and Colombia's law on cannabis at Colombia.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Why Southern Huila is a growing area

• The Ministry of Defence's open dataset, Erradicación, lists 27 entries of marijuana eradicated in the seven municipalities between 12 February 2008 and 25 January 2018, 23.15 hectares in all (downloaded 4 November 2026). Eradication of a crop is evidence that it was grown where it was eradicated.
• The National Police bulletin of 14 May 2015 reports 4,998 marijuana plants hidden among coffee and plantain on a two-hectare plot in the vereda of San Antonio, Pitalito.
• Two sources name Huila at department scale: the 1961 report to the Rio de Janeiro meeting (Sáenz Rovner 2007, p. 215), which lists Huila among the departments with crops and names none of its municipalities, and the National Police report of January 1973, which names the coffee region "from the Department of Caldas to the Department of Huila" (Britto 2020, ch. 5). The page gives both at that scale.
• The status is Active: the entries run to 2018, and the police reported the Pitalito plot in 2015. No source says growing in the area has ended.

The name

All seven municipalities are in the southern half of the department, and the title is a plain description; Garzón and Guadalupe lie north of the others. The area is not the whole of the south: municipalities with no marijuana entries, among them Isnos, Saladoblanco, Oporapa, Elías, Altamira and Palestina, are outside it.

Extent and border

• The map border is the union of the seven municipalities as drawn in OpenStreetMap (relations 1309437 San Agustín, 1342132 Pitalito, 1309444 Timaná, 1309439 Acevedo, 1309442 Suaza, 1356450 Guadalupe, 1309450 Garzón), simplified; about 4,010 km², the figure in the infobox. The seven form one continuous shape, and the border meets that of La Vega where San Agustín adjoins it.
• The dataset gives no vereda, so the border takes in the whole of each municipality.
• The point in the infobox is the centre of the border, not a field.

Sources

• Ministry of Defence, Erradicación (open dataset). Rows for Huila with crop type marihuana. By municipality: San Agustín 9.25 ha (15 rows, June 2008 to January 2018); Guadalupe 8.50 (4 rows: 3 ha on 12 February 2008, 4 on 13 February 2008, 1 and 0.5 in April 2016); Acevedo 1.90 (2 rows, January 2016 and March 2017); Garzón 1.50 (2 rows, February 2016 and May 2017); Suaza 1.00 (1 row, February 2016); Timaná 0.50 (1 row, September 2014); Pitalito 0.50 (2 rows, May and October 2017). The figures on the page are sums of the rows, rounded.
• Policía Nacional, 14 May 2015. The police published the Pitalito find three times, on 13 and 14 May 2015, under different headlines and with the same figures (4,998 plants, two hectares, coffee and plantain); the page cites the version of 14 May, which names the vereda of San Antonio and the Carabineros post of San Agustín. The dataset has no Pitalito row for 2015; its two Pitalito rows are from 2017.

Not used

• In 1968 the police seized 11 sacks of marijuana in the leaf, 21 pounds of seed and 41 pounds of prepared marijuana on a farm in the vereda of El Paraíso, in Algeciras (Sáenz Rovner 2007, p. 220). Algeciras is in the north of Huila, outside the area.
• Marijuana eradicated elsewhere in Huila is outside the area: La Plata (1.5 hectares, 2016), Baraya (1.0, 2014), Nátaga (0.5, 2017) and Colombia (0.5, 2014).